When Maria Cerpa was in high school in the 1990s, her parents pulled her out of classes for several weeks each winter for family trips to Mexico, where they visited with relatives, celebrated religious feasts and reconnected with their culture.
But when Cerpa, now 36, planned a similar trip for her own family in December, the Chicago mother was sure to have her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter back in school when classes resumed in early January.
“I think it’s really important that they know where their roots come from, and they need to appreciate what my parents went through in order for us to be here,” Cerpa said. “But I want them to be prepared when they go to college and to be able to handle the classes.”
It’s a sentiment welcomed by educators at schools across the Chicago area, who say January is no longer a stressful month spent catching up large numbers of Hispanic students after extended absences. A decade ago, administrators at schools from Chicago to Waukegan tried everything from forums educating parents about the importance of attendance to threatening to fail students and forcing the repayment of registration fees to keep families from taking winter trips that lasted a month or more.
This winter, however, only a handful of students at Community High School in West Chicago asked to take extra time off around the holidays — compared with 10 to 15 percent of the student population five years ago — said Antonio del Real, dean of students. Administrators in other school districts with high populations of Hispanic students reported similar decreases.
“For us as a school and administrators, it’s great that they can be here and not miss so much,” said del Real, noting that improved attendance helps ensure that students can keep up with required coursework and meet graduation requirements. “We still have students leave, but not for long periods of time.”
Families have offered a variety of explanations for discontinuing extended vacations, school officials say.
Immigration enforcement at the borders has made it harder for some families with mixed immigration status to re-enter the country. In other cases, local landscaping and construction companies that employ some parents have retained employees over the winter, so they no longer have extended time off. But perhaps the biggest reason is that many of today’s Hispanic parents grew up and were educated in the U.S. and therefore are more familiar with the importance of attendance, school officials say.
“I’m seeing my former students bring their kids here as students,” said Eileen Considine, principal at Columbia Explorers Academy in Chicago, where fewer than 1 percent of families took extended winter breaks this year, compared with as much as 15 percent of the student population years ago. “My parents are very respectful and they understand that it’s very important for their kids to be in school.”
At Waukegan Public Schools, administrators began asking parents to sign paperwork four years ago acknowledging that if students were absent for more than 10 consecutive days, they could be dropped off the class list and required to re-register, said Vanessa Campos, director of school improvement for Waukegan Public School District 60.
As a result, the number of students at Carman-Buckner Elementary School who took extended winter breaks dropped from 10 to about two each year, said Campos, the school’s former principal.
“It dramatically went down through education and accountability,” Campos said.
Jose Lara, a former principal at Clearview Elementary School, also in Waukegan, said he was pleased to see similar declines.
“In this age of accountability, it’s important that every kid has a chance to show what he or she has learned,” Lara said. “If they’re not at school, nobody can help them.”
Maria de los Angeles Torres, executive director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, a Chicago-based national consortium of university-based centers that studies Latinos, said the shift demonstrates how immigrant communities are able to assimilate over time without giving up the rich sense of culture they bring to their new countries. In many instances, evolved immigrant communities are able to give back to their new homes by adding “institutionalized ties” such as the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, Torres said.
“What it means is immigrant communities are resilient and can learn multiple cultures,” said Torres, adding that Chicago becomes a richer place as a result of its evolved immigrant populations. “It’s a place that allows you to straddle, if you will, multiple places and multiple countries to the benefit of the city.”
Jasmine Martinez, a 28-year-old Chicago mother of two, has fond memories of visiting Mexico with her parents each winter. The family would take up to four weeks off to drive across the border and enjoy Christmas traditions including Posadas, pinatas and her grandmother’s cooking.
Next winter, Martinez plans to introduce her two daughters to the same traditions with a winter trip to Mexico. But she said she already knows the family won’t be gone longer than the school calendar allows.
“I wouldn’t want them to miss and be that far behind when they come back,” she said.
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